Also, since this is the science section. Could somebody check my maths. The above article includes this line.

"Once these trees matured they could pull down around 200 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, some two-thirds of extra carbon from human activities put into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution."

This looked wrong straight-away. Checking seems to confirm this. Looking at wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere) 1ppm of C02 is approx. 8Gt of CO2 (other sites have slightly different figures but doesn't make much difference). Saying pre-industrial was 280 ppm CO2 and so increase in C02 since pre-industrial is (410 - 280) =130ppm which gives a figure of approx. 1040 Gt of CO2 added. This means above quote is out by approx a factor of 3. Is this just a confusion between mass of CO2 and Carbon on it's own? If so, where is the error introduced - is it just a typo in to above quote and it should be "pull down around 200 gigatonnes of carbon"?

This looked wrong straight-away. Checking seems to confirm this. Looking at wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere) 1ppm of C02 is approx. 8Gt of CO2 (other sites have slightly different figures but doesn't make much difference). Saying pre-industrial was 280 ppm CO2 and so increase in C02 since pre-industrial is (410 - 280) =130ppm which gives a figure of approx. 1040 Gt of CO2 added. This means above quote is out by approx a factor of 3. Is this just a confusion between mass of CO2 and Carbon on it's own? If so, where is the error introduced - is it just a typo in to above quote and it should be "pull down around 200 gigatonnes of carbon"?

I don't know enough in this area to comment on the process, but you raise a pet peeve of mine. Unless we refer back to actual scientific papers, it seems we are chasing moving goalposts. Even then, it can be very difficult to make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

- Is it tons of carbon or tons of CO2?- What is the baseline year for temperature increases? (deg. C or F? Arrrgh!)- Where on the persistence curve do you select the relative power of a GHG?

And in this case, the numbers look odd but when percentages are stated, do these numbers reflect that the ocean and other processes absorb ~50% of the CO2 emitted? (NOAA)

BTW, I know I have seen numbers much much higher for ocean absorption (IIRC ~90%), which I think is confusion between CO2 and heat.

The media is doing a terrible job. Some of it I suspect is intentional, but I think most of it is sloppiness or ignorance, and often there is no way to get back to the original paper.

From having just 1% forest cover in 1900, Ireland now has 11%, covering 770,000 hectares. It has just committed to planting 8,000 more hectares each year to reach 18% coverage.

Research published last week said planting billions of trees across the world was the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis.

But some in Ireland have a problem with the great green vision. They say Ireland is planting the wrong sort of forests – dark, dank abominations that kill wildlife, block sunlight and isolate communities

The offending species is Sitka spruce, a coniferous evergreen that dominates Ireland’s afforestation programme. Originally from North America, it grows quickly and tall – up to 100 metres – and flourishes in Ireland’s damp, temperate climate.

About half of Ireland’s trees are Sitka spruces, many in packed phalanxes that blanket hills and valleys. They supply wood for pulp, plywood, pallets, fencing, garden furniture and building materials, much of it exported to Britain.

... Private companies, encouraged by tax breaks, followed. Farm land vanished as Sitkas multiplied. They now number an estimated 34.5m – more than 1,000 for each inhabitant.

The trees mature in about 30 years – exponentially faster than oak – and are then felled, making way for a fresh plantation.

Save Leitrim activists say their county has been a laboratory for such plantations – “a national sacrifice zone” – and that the results are a warning to the rest of the country.

This looked wrong straight-away. Checking seems to confirm this. Looking at wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere) 1ppm of C02 is approx. 8Gt of CO2 (other sites have slightly different figures but doesn't make much difference). Saying pre-industrial was 280 ppm CO2 and so increase in C02 since pre-industrial is (410 - 280) =130ppm which gives a figure of approx. 1040 Gt of CO2 added. This means above quote is out by approx a factor of 3. Is this just a confusion between mass of CO2 and Carbon on it's own? If so, where is the error introduced - is it just a typo in to above quote and it should be "pull down around 200 gigatonnes of carbon"?

I don't know enough in this area to comment on the process, but you raise a pet peeve of mine. Unless we refer back to actual scientific papers, it seems we are chasing moving goalposts. Even then, it can be very difficult to make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

Thanks for the response. I would have linked to the original paper but of course it looks like it is pay-walled. Science needs to become more transparent: freely accessible papers and access to data as well. I don't know how publications make money out of that model but it is an area which needs improvement. It would create a step change in the quality of science and also force the reporting on science to up its game. (Anyway - that's most probably enough off-topic).

Thanks for the response. I would have linked to the original paper but of course it looks like it is pay-walled. Science needs to become more transparent: freely accessible papers and access to data as well. I don't know how publications make money out of that model but it is an area which needs improvement. It would create a step change in the quality of science and also force the reporting on science to up its game. (Anyway - that's most probably enough off-topic).

Just to be clear, I wasn't complaining about you. I understand the whole paywall thing, for information we have usually already paid for. I just find so much reporting sloppy.

Maybe if the subsequent reporting was peer reviewed, they would shape up. Hmmm...that's an intriguing idea.

So scientists working at public universities write papers and review them and in between there is a publisher that gets it for free then overcharges it selling the subscriptions to the same institutions.

Everyone seems to take it for granted which is one thing which disappointed me at the time.

I think it's pretty much agreed that it's a racket and Elsevier is one of the worst. There are a number of user groups that consist of a data base or members that have access, and if you ask nicely, they will fetch it and/or forward it. I got a paper through a friend that was little more than a pamphlet with zero new information and it would have cost me ~$25 to find that out.

It is highway robbery, because as you say, they are selling what they get for free. When you consider what Google/Youtube downloads for free, for the hope of an ad click for microdollars, you know these bandits are making a fortune. Service charge? For a download, not a hard copy? Bullshit!

In many cases, I literally helped pay for it!!!

I have heard noises that people are tired of it and things might change soon, but I won't hold my breath.

Have you tried sci-hub for opening paywalled scientific papers? I use it regularly, generally to discover the paper was not what I needed...It's an interesting story how it came to be. https://sci-hub.tw

In Germany the big drought of 2018 and insufficient rain in 2019 leads to a massive dying of trees. At first the spruce trees were "infected" by zillions of bark beetles, then funghi attacked pine trees, and now a massive die-off of beech trees in central Germany started.See attached a report from Wetteronline.de. Just look at the huge areas of dead or dying trees in the movie (sorry it is spoken in German).

preliminary satellite data released by Inpe showed that more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles) of the (Brasilian) rainforest had been cleared in the first 15 days of July - an increase of 68% from the entire month of July 2018.

The situation in Germany is quite bad. To cut dead or infected trees and bring them out of the forests at least 2.1 billion € are needed - and in the same time the price forest owners get for that wood depleted by 50-70%. In many cases they have to spend more money in cutting the trees than they receive later on selling the wood. "It goes beyond what we can afford" said one forest owner to BR5 radio today. And without cutting all of those dead, infected or dying trees and without sufficient rain in the next months a re-forestation is almost impossible.Weather forecast for the next two weeks in Germany: 31-39°C, mostly dry, some isolated thunderstorms. That is definitively not what is needed now...

The crop-failure of 2018 and the die-off of forests in 2019 was a kind of wake-up call for our conservative-social democratic federal government.It has announced 0.6 billion € of aid for the forest-owners. To avoid a mis-use of this money they have to define clear descriptions who can benefit from which amount of money. It is too few, of course, and this process will take some time. Probably not before 2020 some funding can be paid out.The same with the crop-failure last year. Many of the farmers, some already in a precarious state, wait since then. The problem here is that federal government is not responsible, as both EU laws and federal state regulations have to be obeyed. And, again here, they try to avoid a mis-use of the money.

The crop-failure of 2018 and the die-off of forests in 2019 was a kind of wake-up call for our conservative-social democratic federal government.It has announced 0.6 billion € of aid for the forest-owners. To avoid a mis-use of this money they have to define clear descriptions who can benefit from which amount of money. It is too few, of course, and this process will take some time. Probably not before 2020 some funding can be paid out.The same with the crop-failure last year. Many of the farmers, some already in a precarious state, wait since then. The problem here is that federal government is not responsible, as both EU laws and federal state regulations have to be obeyed. And, again here, they try to avoid a mis-use of the money.

As I have written on another thread: maybe, we should not subsidize these monoculture forests, which get sick exactly because they are (mostly) monocultures. They have no immune system and we are surprised when they get sick. We should create biodiverse forests that resist all sorts of sicknesses, flood, heat and cold much better. These forest-problems are totally man-made.

(just a sidenote: me and my partners have literally planted more than a million trees on many-many hectares, I know what I am talking about)

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers report the mechanism works this way: Sulfuric and nitric acid fall to the ground when fossil fuels are burnedl, causing acidification of the soi.

When that happens, a significant amount of soil calcium washes out of the soil, and then plants suffer from calcium deficiency. Calcium deficiency causes the plants to intensify their use of water.

Calcium plays a unique role in plant cells by regulating the minute pores, called stomata, in the plants' leaves or stems, Wang said. If plants don't have enough calcium, they can't close those pores, and their water use increases. Also, when plants suffer from calcium deficiency, they will pump up more water through transpiration, the process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from leaves, to meet their calcium demand, he said.

"We hypothesized that the leaching of the soil calcium supply, induced by acid deposition, would increase large-scale vegetation water use," Lanning said. "We present evidence from a long-term whole watershed acidification experiment demonstrating that the alteration of the soil calcium supply by acid deposition can significantly intensify water use."

The researchers found multiple lines of evidence showing that calcium leaching induced by acid deposition not only increased vegetation water use but markedly decreased the soil water pool on the treated watershed.

Quote

... "When plants are always using a lot of water, it means there will be less water left for people," ... "It also means that these plants are very sensitive to drought. If a drought comes, and they can't close their stomata, they are subject to high levels of mortality due to water stress."

I have just spent a holiday week in Weserbergland, located a little bit NW from the centre of Germany, a hilly-mountaineous region along the Weser river. I hiked a lot through the forests and there is no place from which you can NOT see a dying or a dead tree. It is not only the spruce trees or the beeches, many other species are also affected. And this region here has a rich and complicated geology, which shows that tree damages are not concentrated exclusively over e.g. sandstone ridges or hills made of limestone.It is a real shame how German forests look like. And you can hear the sounds of chainsaws everywhere. Big heaps of wood are placed along the trails in the forests, waiting to be transported into the next sawmill.

According to estimates by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Amazon rainforests absorb a quarter of the carbon dioxide that is released each year from the combustion of fossil fuels. To date, global climate models have assumed that this absorption capacity will also remain constant in the future.

"But there has been no proof of this to date," emphasizes Dr. Katrin Fleischer. "It is entirely possible that the absorption capacity will even decrease." The ecologist from the Professorship for Land Surface-Atmosphere Interactions at the Technical University of Munich worked together with ecologists and ecosystem modelers from 10 countries to investigate the extent to which the nutrient supply in the Amazon region limits the production of biomass.

"Most ecosystem models which allow the future development of ecosystems to be simulated were developed for the temperate latitudes, where there is generally sufficient phosphorus. However, in many areas of the Amazon region, it is in short supply—the ecosystem is many million years old, and the soil is leached of nutrients."

In order to find out how the rainforest will react to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, the researchers selected 14 different ecosystem models. All models were then used to simulate biomass production for the next 15 years: first for the current carbon dioxide concentration of 400 ppm and in a second scenario for an increased concentration of 600 ppm.

The result: Additional carbon dioxide can be absorbed by the trees and transformed into biomass—but only if sufficient phosphorous is available. If it becomes too scarce, the CO2 fertilization effect once again decreases.

Quote

... "This would mean that the rainforest has already reached its limit and would be unable to absorb any more carbon dioxide emissions caused by human kind," ... "If this scenario turns out to be true, the Earth's climate would heat up significantly faster than assumed to date."

Scientists have been studying the possible repercussions of global warming for several years, and suggest it is likely to lead not only to warmer temperatures, but also changes to weather patterns. One such weather change not often mentioned is VPD, which is the difference in air pressure due to water vapor during fully saturated times versus times when it unsaturated. When VPD is increasing, there is less water in the air. VPD is important because of its impact on plants. When VPD rises a certain amount, plants react by closing their stomata, the pores in their leaves, to prevent water loss. But this also shuts down the release of oxygen and the absorption of carbon dioxide—partially shutting down photosynthesis and slowing growth. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if there might be a connection between observed losses of vegetation worldwide and changes to VPD in some parts of the world.

To find out, the researchers obtained datasets that included observation information from across the globe going all the way back to the 1950s. When focusing on VPD, they found that prior to the 1990s, VPD increased only slightly. But after 1998, the VPD grew quite dramatically—by up to 17 times over the next several years in some places, and it remained at those levels. They also found that over half of all vegetated land on the planet experienced a rise in VPD. The researchers also found that the upswing in VPD occurred in lockstep with the rise in global temperatures and the decrease in worldwide vegetative cover. They suggest that global warming is pushing VPD ever higher, resulting in more loss of vegetation—and because the planet is growing hotter, they predict that VPD will continue to increase, as well, resulting in diminishing vegetative cover.

Fig. 1 Global mean vapor pressure deficit (VPD) anomalies of vegetated area over the growing season

Indians plant 220,000,000 trees in one dayDozens of species of saplings were planted in over 1.4 million locations, including 60,000 villages

That is an impressive number, even if only 60% of the trees will survive in the end.Two questions arose: How many trees are cut in India every day (averaged over the year) and will this joint effort be repeated soon?

<snip>That is an impressive number, even if only 60% of the trees will survive in the end.Two questions arose: How many trees are cut in India every day (averaged over the year) and will this joint effort be repeated soon?

Logged

"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell

And i think this will actually be repeated and be done in other Indian states as well because it is rather easy to do. I have read other reports on tree plantings there but they were smaller so i never considered posting them.

Actually people plant trees all over the world but it should be much more important to preserve old growth forests where we not just lose trees but the other plants and animals that evolved with them. Of course we are doing badly at that...

I've seen very large downed screw pine logs in fringe desert that must have lived during pluvial ice age times. The area won't support cactus today.

Dead a long time, but still sequestering some carbon.

Not the petrified variety that are even older, but more akin to the very old stumps on Baffin Island or Ellesmere that explorers burned to heat their tents.John England carbon dated stumps at the heads of arctic fjords that had survived many thousands of years trapped behind the ice shelves that grew in colder times.

Burning wood releases ~ twice the CO2 of coal to produce the same amount of heat.Terry

Brazil's Amazon rainforest has seen a record number of fires this year, new space agency data suggests.The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) said its satellite data showed an 84% increase on the same period in 2018.

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump is upset with China for buying Brazilian soybeans instead of American ones amid the ongoing trade war, but the South American industry got its start thanks to an earlier round of protectionist policies under President Richard Nixon.

Nixon temporarily froze the prices of consumer goods and restricted exports of food in 1973 in response to rising inflation, a move that essentially cut off exports of US soybeans. It worked, creating a surplus and lowering prices for American consumers. But the embargo -- which lasted for just three months -- prompted Brazil to step up its supply, particularly to Japan, creating a formidable competitor on the world agricultural stage and leaving a lasting impact on the American soybean industry.

"It inspired the Japanese to go look for somebody else and, basically, that action created the Brazilian soybean industry," said Andrew Novaković, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University.

Brazil nearly tripled its soybean production over the next decade, and growth continued as Japan made financial investments to help turn Brazil's wooded grasslands into a suitable place to grow soybeans -- a move that also accelerated deforestation in the country.

Now Brazil is the second biggest soybean producer in the world, and it's where China's farmers have been getting a lot of their soybeans since Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs on US agriculture.

Last year was an "extraordinary one for Brazilian soybean producers," according to a recent report from the US Department of Agriculture. Demand from China grow by more than 20%.Before Beijing targeted US-grown agricultural products with tariffs, China was the biggest market for American soybean growers.

Some US farmers, who have been some of those hardest hit by the trade war, are worried they won't ever get the Chinese market back. "I don't think, from an agricultural perspective, that we'll be a primary supplier to China again," said Grant Kimberley, who grows soybeans and corn in Iowa and is the director of market development at the Iowa Soybean Association."I think the Chinese are pouring money into South America right now," he added.

There is little reason for China to go back into the US market. Their foreign policy of increasing their influence and presence in the world supports development of trading relationships with Brazil. Brazil plans to increase soy production substantially. (see below)

One wonders how much of the additional area of 95,000 km2 will be from detruction of virgin woodland.

Brazil's soybean production could increase 32.9% over the next 10 years to 151.9 million tons according to a long term study from the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture released last Friday.

Soybeans - The Ministry estimates that over the next decade, Brazil's soybean acreage could increase 9.5 million hectares or 26.6% to 45.3 million hectares in 2029 (111.8 million acres). Of all the major crops in Brazil, the soybean acreage will expand the most over the next 10 years, although it will still be less than the 67% it expanded over the past decade.

Brazilian soybean acreage is expected to expand in four areas. In northeastern Brazil, which is comprised of the states Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia, commonly referred to as the Matopiba region, soybean acreage is expected to expand 14.9% over the next decade. There is still land available in the region at relatively cheap prices and the climate in the region is generally favorable and similar to the climate in the cerrado region of central Brazil. One of the biggest challenges in the region is the general lack of infrastructure, but that is slowly improving. On the positive side, the region is relatively close to export facilities which would help to hold down the cost of transportation.

Another area of expansion will be in the cerrado areas of central Brazil as farmers convert degraded pastures to row crop production. Land prices are relatively expensive in states such as Mato Grosso, so it is more economical to convert pastures to row crop production than it is to purchase new land for the same purpose. This pasture conversion is occurring all across the cerrado regions of central Brazil.

In areas where there is not any new land or pastures available, soybean acreage will expand by substituting for other crops. That is what is happening in states such as Parana where farmers are opting for less full-season corn production in favor of increased soybean acreage. The full-season corn is then converted to safrinha corn planted after the soybeans are harvested.

Lastly, additional soybean acreage is expected on the southern fringe of the Amazonian states of Rondonia and Para where land prices are still relatively cheap.

The environment minister of Brazil, where wildfires have been sweeping the Amazon rainforest, was booed at a climate event on Wednesday as celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ariana Grande joined an international chorus of criticism.

It's Not Just Brazil's Amazon - Bolivia's Vital Forests Are Burning Out of Control, Too

Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That's more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years.

...

The Chiquitano dry forest in Bolivia was the largest healthy tropical dry forest in the world. It's now unclear whether it will retain that status. The forest is home to Indigenous peoples as well as iconic wildlife such as jaguars, giant armadillos, and tapirs. Some species in the Chiquitano are found nowhere else on Earth.